


you should have told me

by ThaliaClio



Series: cracked mirrors [3]
Category: Constantine (TV), Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior
Genre: Aftermath of Possession, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Mick and John are twins because Matt Ryan's face, Post Saint of Last Resorts, Protectiveness, because no way was john okay after that, could be read as a stand alone, mentions of Anne Marie, mentions of Cooper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-29 02:01:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3878134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThaliaClio/pseuds/ThaliaClio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John isn't okay. Mick tries to make it better. </p><p>(You really don't need to have seen CM:SB to understand this story, but there are character notes at the beginning just in case. Also, you should go watch it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	you should have told me

He wants to breathe, is trying to breathe. But everytime he tries he can taste the blood in his throat, can feel his lungs tearing themselves apart. He wants to tell them _kill me, kill me now. i was so wrong. i can’t i can’t **i can’t**_ but there’s a demon using his mouth, spewing acid and sewage at some of the only friends he has left.

Dimly he knows that the body is not meant to conort the way he keeps trying to move. He can feel the restraints cutting even through the padding. His muscles are ripping, stretching while his bones grind and crack.

And then it’s done, over. The demon’s gone, gone, gone and the only evil left in this body is John himself. He doesn’t remember what he says to them or what they say back, but he hopes he is kind. Doubts he is.

When Anne Marie leaves, he says his thanks. She doesn’t believe him. Neither do Chas or Zed. That hurts more than he thought it would.

They all scatter throughout the millhouse. He thinks Zed is going to meditate, try to forget about her encounter with her father’s cult, and he understands the need for silence. Chas leaves too. Maybe to call his daughter.

Of course, he might be completely wrong and they could have left entirely and are never coming back. He wouldn’t blame them.

John can’t remember ever being so afraid and relieved at being left alone. He can finally stop pretending that everything doesn’t hurt so fucking bad. He’s too afraid to take any medication because of the heroin. If he felt a little less like crying he might be grateful to the demon for wiping that out of his system and sparing him the withdrawal, but he thinks his ribs and wrists are cracked and knows that he pulled at least four muscles and gave himself a concussion and his friends hate him and so he chokes on a sob instead.

When he falls on the couch, soft as it is, everything flares into one whitehot beacon and he actually does let out a few tears and a half-strangled sob. 

_Ring._

_Ring._

_Ring._

For one moment, John doesn’t want to pick up the phone. Wants to ignore the world and cry and wallow for one bloody minute. If the phone wasn’t actually in his pocket, he might have anyway.

He picks up his phone without looking at the name.

_“John?! You motherfucker -- what the sodding hell happened?! I’m going to shove my rifle so far up your ass I’ll be using your mouth as a muzzle if you went off the rez again.”_

_(“John?! I’m scared, I’m afraid for you. You’re hurt, I know you’re hurt. Please God be okay. I love you.”)_

John doesn’t even try not to sob this time. His brother called him. Mick is safe. Mick cares. Mick loves him, doesn’t judge him. Dimly he hears Mick saying _“no, no, no”_ and _“please talk to me”_ and _“John breathe”_ but he can’t speak for a good two minutes.

When he can finally squeeze in a proper breathe, it burns and aches but he feels better than he has in days anyway.

 _“John?”_ Mick sounds afraid and very close to crying too. _“What happened? Please, please talk to me. I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me. The tattoo kept burning and burning and nobody was answering their phone.”_

John’s voice is shaky and weak when he answers. “I got shot. And then summoned a demon to heal me. And then went to a Mexican prison for killing some gangsters. And then killed two more gangsters. And then ODed on heroin to sneak out of the prison. And then got exorcised. Anne Marie and Zed and Chas were all there.”

For a long, long minute, there is no sound but John’s ragged wheezing.

_“I’ll call you back in ten minutes.”_

Click.

If it were anyone else -- including Chas and Zed and Anne Marie -- John would have been furious at being hung up on, particularly after spilling his guts. But this was Mick and he knew Mick. Mick was good, Mick was safe. Something warm and soft curled in John’s heart and he smiled, tasting the salt of his tears and the copper of his blood as his lips spread.

Exactly ten minutes later, and the sound of ringing broke John out of his doze.

“Micky?” He groans.

_“I told Coop you got in a car accident coming back from Mexico. There’s no record of you in the prison, right?”_

“No. I made sure Chas swiped my forms before we left. Lucky that they still use paper instead of a system.”

_“True. I have a week off, barring any emergencies. You’re at the millhouse?”_

“Yes. Chas and Zed are, too, but I don’t think they much want to be around me.” He doesn’t say _I don’t want to be near me_ and he doesn’t say _please don’t let me be alone_ , swallows down the words like so much vomit.

_“Chas and Zed didn’t bother to fucking call me, so they can sod off, alright? I’m in DC now, so I’ll be there in a few hours. Go to sleep, alright? I’ll be there when you wake up.”_

“Mick?” John hates how afraid he sounds, how tired.

 _“I won’t hang up.”_ Somewhere in the back of his mind, John is amused by the gentleness in Mick’s voice because he knows nobody would believe the kindness were he the one speaking it.

John doesn’t answer,but he does finally lay down, putting the phone on speaker and pulling an afghan that Chas had picked up at some point from the back of the couch. His head is pillowed on his arm as he stares into the fire instead of the mirror for once. He showered only a few hours ago, but he still feels dirty. The demon stained his soiled soul even further, grabbed and scratched at it with bloody claws, spit poison and acid into his veins. The plastic and glass of the phone is warm under his palm, held close enough to his mouth for his breath to fog the surface.

Mick is humming “Holidays in the Sun”, and John can’t quite tell if he’s more comforted by his brother’s voice or the familiar song, but he’s pretty sure it’s just because it’s Mick. A door opens and closes and then an engine is running, a soft purr in the background of the call.

_“Do you want me to talk?”_

John blinks slowly, already lulled into some kind of half-doze. “Mmm. ‘s alright. D’ya mind playin’ a little Johnny Rotten for us, eh mate?”

_“I was favoring some Lady Gaga meself, but sure.”_

John falls asleep to the sound of Mick singing off-key and screaming guitars.

\--

When Mick walks into the millhouse it’s almost ten at night. Chas’s cab wasn’t in the driveway and neither was the truck John had said was Zed’s. He’s stuck somewhere between angry and relieved that his brother is alone.

He has a bag in his hand, the smell of broth and chicken wafting through the brown paper. John doesn’t like to admit it, but he has a weakness for Panera soup bread bowls, particularly chicken and rice. (Mick personally prefers the black bean, but he tries not to judge. No matter how weird he thinks it is to put rice in a soup.)

He walks straight over to the couch, knowing that John fell asleep in the main room rather than his bedroom because he could hear the fire before it died down. He’s still holding the phone to his ear even now. _(He’d been waiting, terrified that John would wake up crying or screaming and he’d still be too far away to help. But he stayed asleep.)_

Now, though, he can see John curled under a fuzzy brown blanket, hand curled around his own still-running phone. Mick can’t even see his brother’s face, just his hand and  head of messy blonde hair. Mick smiles, maybe a little sadly, and finally hangs up.

He sets the bag of food onto the table in front John, more than a little pleased that the table is empty of bottles. He starts to set up the food, pulling out the plastic cups of soup and pouring them into the bread bowls. Mick hopes that the smells will wake up John; he doesn’t want to startle his brother awake. He knows from experience that a gentle wake up after trauma is always, always better than being shaken awake.

Just as he stands to throw away the empty containers, he sees the blanket move, letting just the top of John’s head peek out, eyes wide open, going from dead to the world to wide awake in less than a second.

“Mick,” he says with a smile, his eyes crinkling up just a little. It’s telling that he doesn’t move from under the blanket at all.

Still, despite the worry and fear squeezing his lungs and his heart, Mick smiles back. “I brought food. Figured you hadn’t eaten much.”

“Thanks, mate.” John’s voice is muffled.

“You need to come out from under the blanket to eat it.”

“Uh-huh.”

Mick sighs. “I know how bad you’re gonna look, brother. Exorcisms are a nasty business. Please eat.”

For a second Mick thinks he might have to drag the afghan off of his brother. But then John sits up, slowly, haltingly. His face is drawn, eyes bruised. The corners of his mouth are scabbed over like it was stretched to wide and ripped. He’s still wearing a white dress shirt ( _probably couldn’t get a t-shirt over his head)_ but there are thick bands of bruising around his wrists and smaller bruises blooming around a needle mark in the crook of one elbow.

Mick swallows and tries not to think about the bruises he can’t see. His tattoo twinges.

“Rice and chicken? And it’s not even our birthday.”

\--

_The first tour Mick serves overseas is messy and bloody terrible. Two in his unit die, and he gets shot. When he wakes up in a hospital in a country he’s not allowed to name, John is sitting next to him because **i was in the area anyway** and **i’m flattered i’m still your ICE**. Mick doesn’t believe him really, but doesn’t say anything because the drugs are good. By the time the morphine is gone, so is John._

_\--_

_Mick is 20 and on leave for a while, so he’s back in the UK. He’s just landed in the airport and thinking about calling up John when his chest gets hit with a branding iron. Mick stumbles into a wall, cursing -- and getting cursed at by other annoyed fliers -- and clawing at his shirt. The burning turns into a throbbing and it’s right over that fucking weirdass tattoo John gave him._

_Mick freezes. Remembers John mumbling over a tattoo gun in a dead language. Remembers John showing up at his bedside when nobody had fucking called him._

_He calls Chas._

_John answers and his voice is wet and choking and he can hear Chas telling him **fucking hang up the phone** and **i swear to god if you die while i’m giving you a piggy-back**. John laughs and laughs and it’s a horrible, painful sound and says **i’ll have to call you back**._

_When John calls him three hours later, Mick is so drunk he can’t read the name on the phone and John is so high he’s floating but they’re both alive and nobody’s chest hurts._

\--

Hours later and John is asleep again. Mick had apparently dozed off, too, still sitting on the end of the couch by John’s feet. He had a crick in his neck when he sat up and a message waiting on his phone. Mick yawned as he stood, deciding not to bother trying to move John upstairs and into his bed, too afraid of messing with his injuries and too happy John was willing to sleep at all. Instead he picks up the leftovers -- of which there are plenty because John would rather drink a bottle than sip at a bowl -- and puts them in the fridge for later.

When he comes back the light on his phone is still blinking, and he smiles a little as he opens it.

 

**From: Coop**

**How’s your brother?**

**To: Coop**

**ok**

**hospitals too much $$ so were at home**

**To: Coop**

**call me if theres an emrgncy**

**From: Coop**

**Alright.**

**From: Coop**

**Your grammar is terrible.**

 

Mick grins and puts his phone down on the now empty table before collapsing in the little bit of cushion by John’s feet again. John had curled into the fetal position, and his ribs probably wouldn’t thank him for it when he woke up. Mick had an industrial sized bottle of paracetamol in his bag, though (and bandages and braces and cloths and needle and thread and local analgesia and water and hydrogen peroxide and and bruise salve and iodine and antibacterial cream and general antibiotics). 

He looks at his brother, entirely asleep and still tense. The corners of his mouth are rusty and his wrists hurt to look at, but so do the deep bruises under his eyes. Mick scratches at his neck and eyes his bag by the table and John’s (visible) injuries before sighing.

“John,” he whispers, running one hand over John’s leg through the blanket.

John groans in response, but Mick spies one blood-shot eye staring him down.

“Mate, Imma need ya to sit up a bit, yeah? Let me get a look at you and make sure ya don’t keel over just yet.”

John groans some more, but leverages himself upright with a grimace. His eyes are still half closed and he’s wearing the blanket like a coat, but he’s upright. His head lists over to the side to lean on Mick’s shoulder.

“ ‘m okay, bruv,” he says, voice muffled by Mick’s shoulder. “Just need a kip, ‘s all.

Mick hums in response, leaning over to grab the bag. John’s head manages to nestle itself in the crack between the back cushion so that he’s still upright(ish).

Mick pulls out a cloth and dabs it with some of the hydrogen peroxide before turning back to John.

“Where is the skin broken? Just the mouth and the wrists?”

John blinks a little, and Mick is more than a little grateful he’s too tired to try lying. “Ankles, too. Just a little bit.”

Mick nods and brushes at the scabbed over cuts and scrapes with the cloth. It’s clear John’s at least showered since coming back, but there’s still a little blood smeared around the wrists and ankles. Mick does his best to get it out of John’s nails, too.

The fire is warm and crackling at his back, the only sound next to breathing as Mick gently spreads antibacterial cream over the shallow wounds before bandaging them.

“Bruises?” He asks next, crouched on the floor with his hands in his bag.

“Chest, mostly,”John slurs tiredly. “Think ‘m ribs are cracked. Maybe the wrists and ankles, too.”

Mick lets out a slow breath through his nose. “Alright, mate. Alright.”

He has one wrist brace, one ankle brace, and one knee brace, he remembers as he goes to spread the salve on John’s chest. It’s an angry maroon in most places, the shape of bands and hands, quickly darkening to purple and black. He probes a little at the ribs just to be sure as he goes.

“I’m going to go ahead and wrap the ribs because I think you’re right. I have enough braces for half your limbs. Do you have any spares?”

“S’me ‘pstairs in the bathroom. Chas keeps ‘em too.”

Getting John’s shirt off is a challenge in and of itself, and wrapping John’s ribs hurts John more than it hurts Mick, but Mick still winces every time his brother does. He straps on the two braces he has before going to hunt down the ones Chas has squirreled away.

John grab at his wrist and Mick stands to go upstairs.

“Thank you,” he says. John isn’t looking at him, though, staring at the fire with what might well be tears in his eyes.

Mick grabs back at his wrist, just a little more gently at the feel of a cotton bandage under his hand. “Anytime.”

__

They’re standing by their cars, both fiddling with their keys.

“You sure John’s going to be okay?” Zed asks.

Chas knows the truth and he knows what Zed needs to hear.

“Yeah,” he lies. “I just think he needs a little space.”

Zed offers a tight smile, a little guilty, but there’s relief too.

“Go, go,” Chas shoos. “A little dancing and drinking will be good for you.”

Zed laughs a little. “Going to a club after --” she stops, waves her hand and grimaces -- “all this. Makes me seem callous, no?”

Chas shrugs. “Doing what we do… Seeing what we see… There’s no right way to cope with it. John drinks and mopes. If a club helps, then it helps.”

Zed looks at him inquisitively. Chas shoves down his discomfort. “And what do you do?”

Chas smiles a little sheepishly. “I like to catch double-features. There’s a little theatre ‘bout half an hour away that only shows movies from before the 1960s.”

Zed laughs again, this time less strained. “Personally I prefer Whedon to Hitchcock, but go enjoy your movies, old man.”

“Yeah, yeah. Tonight it’s Frankenstein and Dracula, not Hitchcock, smartass.”

Zed waves her hand as she opens up her car. “Doesn’t make you seem any younger.”

Chas considers sticking his tongue out or flipping her off, but he’s not John, so he just shoos her away with his hand as he climbs into the cab. Zed’s truck growls as it starts up and pulls away, overwhelming the sound of the comparatively ancient taxi.

Chas looks back at the millhouse as he goes to back up, pausing for a moment. He’d almost lost John today. As often as that happened, he felt like he should be more used to it. But then John was okay and Chas… Chas was _angry_. How dare he? How _dare_ John summon a demon into his body? He knew, _he knew_ that his soul was condemned and. He _knew_ that Chas was right there, that he was coming to help. He _knew_ , and he did it anyway, and now Chas was so afraid and angry and _relieved_ and he couldn’t, just couldn’t, look at John right now.

Chas backs out and pulls onto the road.

__

Chas checked his phone to find he had gotten a text from Zed while the movie was playing just as he went to leave the theatre in a group message she had set up for her, him, and John..

 

**From: Zed**

**Not coming back tonight. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.**

**From: John**

**whats his name? ;)**

**From: Zed**

**Well it definitely isn’t John.**

 

Chas snorted and pocketed his phone without answering. He’d see John in half an hour, and Zed’s message was so old that she was probably busy by now anyway.

The drive was nice, peaceful. He left the radio off and the windows down and just breathed for a moment. He gave himself thirty minutes for a reprieve, free of concern, before he was home and had to shoulder his responsibilities all over again.

There was a car.

There was a car in front of the millhouse that didn’t belong to Zed. Or him. Or John (who didn’t have a car at all). 

There shouldn’t be a car. And yet -- there was a car.

Chas got out of the cab cautiously, pulling a switchblade from his boot. Paranoid? No, not really. Not when your roommate was John Bloody Constantine.

“John,” Chass called out loudly as he opened the door, peering in without stepping inside.

“In ‘ere, mate,” John replied quickly, his voice even and unafraid. Cheerful, actually.

Chas kept the knife out when he went inside.

And then immediately put it away.

“Mick?!”

__

John felt better. Not good, mind, but better. His clothes weren’t rubbing on tender, broken skin anymore. He wasn’t hungry or cold. He felt less exhausted and more vaguely sleepy. Mick’s fingers scratched gently at his scalp as he listed against his shoulder.

Mick was humming atonally, flipping through an old book. [Peter Pan]. John smiled a little, tugging at the scabs on the corners of his lips, but not breaking them this time.

He felt safe.

“Mick?”

Mick hummed, hand not stilling.

“I’m afraid, I think.”

He could feel Mick tense underneath him, but felt the tension bleed out with a breath half a second later. The hand kept moving on his head.

“Me too,” Mick says into John’s hair, breath ruffling it.

“I’m going to die and I’m going to Hell and I can’t find a way out,” John says, voice small but steady. He curls his hands tighter into the afghan.

“I would drag you spitting and cursing out of the fire if it comes to that,” Mick says and there’s steel in his words. “There’s nowhere I wouldn’t come for you.”

John nods and there are tears in his eyes and he’s still afraid but he also believes his brother because he always has.

“Thank you,” he says.

He thinks of Zed and Chas and Anne Marie and thanks and he kind of wants to go get his whiskey from the cabinet.

Mick’s hand keeps moving and his cheek is still on top of John’s head and he says, “Always, mate. We’re always going to be there for each other.”

And John breathes. Mick turns the page. Things are okay.

__

Mick -- not John -- is standing in their kitchen.

John Constantine’s twin brother -- who works for a very specialized unit of the FBI -- is standing in their kitchen. Drinking a beer.

“Chas,” he says evenly. Angrily.

Mick is leaning on the counter, rolling the half-drunk bottle between his palms. His brow is furrowed and his lips pursed and Chas can smell antiseptic and chicken soup underneath the smoke from the fire place.

Chas remembers his phone in his pocket. Remembers he had to get a new phone, new number after one of their cases. Remembers he hasn’t spoken to Mick in a long while. Remembers that John was dying and he hadn’t told his brother.

Chas flinches.

Mick stands and raises his beer to swallow down the rest of it. He stares at the pack of Silk Cuts on the counter. When he raised his eyes to meet Chas’s, Chas still hasn’t thought of anything to say.

“Is Mexican heroin really better than the stuff up here?” Mick finally asks and his face is dangerously still.

John is a liar and a trickster and cunning and reckless and dangerous in so many ways. Sometimes Chas forgets that Mick might actually be worse. He is very much aware right now.

Chas swallows. “John called you.”

“Yeah.”

“Where is he now?”

Mick snorts and shakes his head. “I put him to bed.”

Chas wants to ask if John’s okay. But Mick’s jaw is twitching. He waits.

“You left him,” Mick finally says. “Ignoring the fact that _you didn’t bloody call me when my brother was dying_ because that was a stressful, busy situation. Ignoring the fact that you don’t know if I knew someone who could have helped you down there -- _which I bloody well fucking do_. Ignoring the fact that nobody called me in the hours you had to wait before the plane ride and before he woke up. You have _seen_ an exorcism before, yeah?”

Mick’s hands are clenched and his knuckles are white. Chas doesn’t even breathe.

“ _Nobody_ is okay after that. Fucking forget the _emotional bloody impact_ of a demon crawling into your head and calling it home. Exorcisms are _violent_. John had cracked ribs -- _three of them_ \-- not mention his wrists, ankles, and the bloody concussion. The only sodding treatment you lot saw fit to give him was -- what? Tell him to go _shower_?”

With every word, every spat curse, Chas flinches. Because yes, he’d been angry at John. Furious, even. But Mick is _right_.

“I’m sorry,” he says when he realizes Mick is waiting for a response.

Mick laughs but it’s a nasty, angry sound. “You’re _sorry_. John called me crying and you’re _sorry._ ” The sound he makes now is a sigh and a huff and a sob and Chas’s heart hurts in his chest. “He can’t _do this_ alone, Chas. Don’t make him.”

Chas’s voice shakes when he answers. “I don’t mean to.”

“Me neither, mate. Me neither.” Mick sags back on the counter like his strings are cut. He rolls the now empty bottle between his hands. “If this ever happens again I will drag you into Hell with me to pull his soul out.”

Chas swallows and when Mick looks at him again there are tears in his eyes and steel in his jaw.

“You are the only man who has ever chosen to stand by my brother. John is a lot of things. Don’t let him be a martyr.”

Chas can only stand there as Mick throws the bottle away and turns to go up the stairs. He only finds his voice when Mick reaches the top of the stairs.

“Mick?”

He freezes, hand clenched on the railing.

“It won’t. Happen again. I won’t let it.”

When Mick lets go and turns the corner, disappearing from sight, Chas lets out a shaky, frightened breath. He has an apology to make tomorrow, he knows. Right now he needs a drink though.

As he sits on the couch drinking, staring into the mirror and watching dead mean flit in and out of his vision, he thinks about the brothers upstairs. Mick warned him not to let John become a martyr. He wonders who will stop Mick from doing the same.


End file.
